This profile was posted on Playbill.com on March 6, the day before "The Hurt Locker" won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director.

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For actor Brian Geraghty, landing the part of the war-hero son in The Subject Was Roses (playing at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum through March 21) was as easy as a walk at the beach; or to be more precise, the role fell into his lap while he was actually walking on the beach. Geraghty, who loves to surf and has the sun-kissed blonde locks and chiseled features to prove it, was at the beach in Malibu one day and ran into Martin Sheen and his wife, Janet Templeton. Geraghty had starred in Sheen's son Emilio Estevez's 2006 film, "Bobby," so he had met Martin and Janet before. The group decided to go back to the Sheen house, and they spent the rest of the afternoon talking about life and work. More than one director had remarked to Geraghty that he looks like he could be a Sheen sibling, and Sheen and Geraghty began gently batting around the idea of acting together one day.

To Geraghty's surprise, he says, a few weeks later the script for Frank Gilroy's The Subject Was Roses arrived at his door, with a note explaining that Sheen was hoping to do the play, but was looking for the right actor to play the role of the son, Timmy Cleary, the part that helped launch Sheen's career in the original 1964 Broadway production (and subsequent film '68 version). Geraghty, who's career was starting to ignite with memorable supporting roles in films like "The Hurt Locker," "Jarhead," "We Are Marshall," and the recent festival favorite "Easier With Practice," seemed like a good match, and he had been looking for an opportunity to do a play.

Sheen and Sheen/Estevez Productions had approached Michael Ritchie (the artistic director of the Center Theatre Group in L.A., which runs the Mark Taper Forum) with the idea of mounting "The Subject Was Roses." Ritchie was enthusiastic, and initially told them they could stage it in the 2011 season. But he eventually found a spot for it this winter, and things fell into place quickly from there.

While the production came together fairly easily, Geraghty admits that learning the part and acclimating to the rigors of stage acting has been the biggest challenge of his career. While he trained for two years in conservatory program at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, he hadn't been in a professional theatre production (other than for readings or small one-off shows) since he moved to L.A. more than seven years ago.

"I thought in my career I'd be doing regional theatre and so on. But it just happened that I started working in film and never really got back to it. I've been banging around doing black-box stuff, this and that, whatever I could do for years. But this is my first real professional Broadway-type show."

	Brian Geraghty in The Subject Was Roses
	photo by Craig Schwartz

Set in the Bronx in 1946 at the close of World War II, The Subject Was Roses, is an emotionally devastating family drama about a combative Irish-American couple, their unhappy, combustible marriage, and their only child, who has just returned home from the war and finds himself caught in the middle of homefront combat. The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for best play, finds Timmy hiding his war hero status from his father, because dear old dad yearned to fight in the war and come home with his own medals.

"It's the hardest thing I've ever done — by far. It scared me. And I could have said, 'Wow, that's a great honor, but no thank you.' But it was such a great opportunity, I couldn't turn it down," he says. "I've acted more this month than I have in the last year because it's every day. It never stops. I'm struggling constantly with it, but it's also been a tremendous experience for me an actor."

Geraghty has always been a fan of Sheen's, even before they met and got to know each other ("He starred in two of my top five favorite films of all time: 'Badlands' and 'Apocalypse Now'"), but he was amazed at how unassuming, unselfish, and giving Sheen was in rehearsals. And he's become something of a father figure to the young actor.

"I had an immediate connection with Martin the first time I met him. He just made me feel so comfortable," Geraghty says. "I don't think any actor that originated a role could be more selfless, more generous, and have no ego about themselves and what they've done in the past. He's had a tremendous career and still does, and he's such a generous guy. He makes me want to come to work and do a good job every day."

While Timmy was a seminal role in Sheen's career, Geraghty says that the elder statesman is giving this young upstart plenty of space to find the character for himself.

"He'll come up to me at the end of the day and go, 'You've got it now. It's yours. You own it. Congratulations.' And I say, 'Oh, wow. Really? I mean, I don't feel like I do.' But he just says, 'Just let it be now. Trust it. You've got it.' So he lets me know that I'm on the right path." Continued...